Lab – LG Oled 27GR95QE: a bright HDR mode

The LG UltraGear 27GR95QE monitor features a latest generation Oled MLA (Micro-Lens Array) panel. This is equipped with billions of micro-lenses that can also be found on the LG 65G3, but with a slightly different matte anti-reflective filter.

Sub-pixels are different from those found on televisions. If they are often in the form of eighth notes on the Oled panels of the latter, the sub-pixels here are rectangular. LG Display still uses its WOLED technology (for White-Oled) based on four sub-pixels: the classic red, green and blue are supplemented by a white sub-pixel to increase brightness without having to push the three color sub-pixels primaries as much as possible.

The Oled MLA panel present on the LG 65G3 TV is equipped with a very efficient VantaBlack anti-reflective filter, but with a semi-gloss rendering. LG’s Oled monitor opts for an even more effective matte anti-reflective filter, but which slightly loses precision.

The LG monitor perfectly handles the HDR10 signal in Game 2 and RTS mode. The other modes display slightly less faithful colors. The reference curve (in yellow) is well respected and the peak brightness reaches 637 cd/m², which is excellent for a PC monitor. For comparison, the Philips Evnia 34M2C8600 is content with 449 cd/m².

The LG monitor reproduces a good part of the dynamics of the image, but we are far from what the best OLED televisions can offer, such as the Samsung S95B and Sony A95K with around 1000 cd / m² and even almost 1500 cd / m² measured on the LG 65G3 equipped with an MLA (microlens) panel – as is the case with this monitor. It is concluded that the use of microlenses on the monitor serves above all to improve energy efficiency and to avoid the phenomenon of marking as much as possible.

We measured the delta E at 3.1. This value is very slightly higher than 3, the threshold below which the human eye no longer distinguishes the nuances and the colors cannot be considered as perfectly faithful to the source. However, the rendering is precise enough to produce colors quite close to those sent by the source. This is a very good result for a PC monitor, since they still struggle with HDR content.

No surprise in terms of colorimetric coverage, which is identical to that measured on Oled televisions. The LG monitor displays 96% of the colors of the DCI-P3 color space mainly used by the cinema industry for movies and series. The monitor thus rises to the level of the best TVs, which cover more than 90% of the DCI-P3. On the Rec.2020 side, the coverage is 70%. This is quite far from the 90% necessary to display a good part of the colors of this color space, but at present, only tri-laser projectors are able to display all the colors of this color space.

All brightness and colorimetry measurements mentioned in this article were performed with a SpectraCal C6-HDR probe and CalMAN Ultimate software.